Chronicles of Riddick: Edge of Fury
by artiist1284
Summary: Kyra's death allowed him to be blindsided. Guilt dulled his edge and made him sloppy. Time to zero the clock and find that animal side again. The New Lord Marshall...an oath he never got around to really taking. An unfinished Prophecy calling for a key that can soothe the unstoppable beast. Bringing light to the consuming, unquenchable darkness, before it's too late for all of life
1. Chapter 1

**AN:** New story kinda, sort of a rewrite of my other. Might be its own story, might be taking some ideas and concepts from the other to add to this. I don't know where I'm going with my other story, yet. I still have an unfinished chapter I've kept for years. Good possibility I might post it. The muses right now are flowing for this one.

Combining parts of all the Riddick movies, stories, comics, universe, etc., filling in gaps, and writing what I think would happen future or otherwise.

Anyway, hope it's an entertaining read. Enjoy and please Review! Thanks.

 **Title:** Chronicles of Riddick: Edge of Fury  
 **Rating:** T -language, violence, explicit scenes  
 **Disclaimer:** I do not own or in any way am a part of Riddick and their respective parties.

 **Summary:** Of course, they were gonna' try to kill me - So, the question ain't what happened? The question is...what happened to me? I needed a way out. Some new place, or maybe just an old one. How they get so close? How'd I let them blindside me like that...Her, Kyra...Jack. The best way to a man's heart. Love? Laughable. So, why I'm not? Somewhere along the way I lost a step, got sloppy...What to do? How do I get her back?

* * *

 _Blindsided - It's always the punch you don't see coming that puts you down..._

The miasma of death unfurling the only light I've ever accepted in this arcane existence. Jack, Kyra, whatever, the hell, the kid was calling herself. She felt good in my hands, even in the throes of death sipping its fill of her essence. It couldn't steal away how right her body felt against mine. Noticed it back in Crematoria, when I had her pressed against the barred wall. Hands wedged over her head between my lethal grip, my other, holding her up between the apex of womanly thighs. How well it fit - No. Shouldn't be thinking about that, now. Not now, not with the kid like this.

"I thought you were dead." Her weak voice whispered, eyelashes feathered, closed against pale cheeks.

"Are you with me, Kyra?" The painful words escaped a voice barely recognized, though it was mine.

I didn't know myself, anymore, at that moment and for once the beast inside as silent as the darkness threatening to completely overrun me. Deathly silent, it too felt the breaking cords of a kindred predator being erased out of being. Another animal, something like me.

First time feeling consumed by loss. First time for everything.

Cradled in my hand, her head crowned with sleeked brunette hair as life poured and puddled into a ruddy pool around her body framed in their black tattered robes. Her green eyes cleared, free of the Necromonger influence. The eyes of the kid, Jack, I'd known all those years ago in New Mecca on the planet Helion Prime. The same faith I didn't deserve then, or even now, shined through and wrenched all the more at the black, insidious stone whose beat faltered inside. _Not for me!_ Not again...

A final clenched hold on life as she gasped and spoke words that still haunted nightmares to this day. "I was always with you..." A rattled gasp of air, blood seeping from the corner of petaled lips. "I was..."

The beauty of her light sifted through my hands; unattainable, as her head lolled to the side and I knew she was gone. The beast in me made a wounded sound, like it too was dying and on the verge of following her toward that great celestial echelon. Emotions played on my face, but I couldn't believe any of it. Kyra, really gone this time, and no amount of busting in to save the day was going to bring her back.

Dammnit, kid.

Better to believe that Kyra was a trader, once again. She signed up with mercs the first time, then. Now, Necromonger conversion. Better-yes, because then I could resent the street rat, and I wouldn't have to feel and deal with this fuckin' sick sense of loss. Twice now, the kid done saved my immoral ass. Back on that ship, the Kublai Khan, killing that psycho bitch Chillingsworth who wanted me as part of her sadistic art collection. Back then, I got a glimpse of the kid's animal side. Thought I could save her from being something like me, though. Dropped her off with that holy man, Imam-Abu al-Walid; he was more of a chance at a normal life, a better life, than what I could have provided for the kid.

Look how great that turned out. If, only, I kept her with me.

Now...now, with a hole bored straight through; a lethal spike impaling her nubile body after taking a spear into the back-side of that bitch Zyhlaw to save me. Once again, the kid proved what I always knew deep down in the crevice of my being, that she was mine.

Always, mine.

So, this is the shit that normal people felt when they _cared_? Damn.

It didn't register to me, the flood of wetness from my eyes as my gloved hand raised to shield my face from the truth of it all - Selfcondemnation? Maybe. The patent of it being an inclination toward the girl - Love? Laughable. So, why wasn't I laughing? Seated down upon the grand Lord Marshall throne (Look who came all' from the back of the bus an' shit). The lifeless body of Kyra at my feet like a sacrificial lamb to the slaughter, while the fuckers began to fall to their knees in reverence.

Fuckin' cry, me? Never. Yet, even inside, I couldn't deny my animal's pained whine at the only beauty we ever truly wanted, snubbed out way too soon.

"You keep what you kill." I could hear the words ghost pass my busted lips.

 _" **THRESHOLD! TAKE US TO THE THRESHOLD!**_ ", they shouted, my army of half-dead monsters.

Here, now. Me, Richard B. Riddick, fuckin' new Lord Marshal. The 7th one entitled to this maniacal legion of Necromongers - Someone to' put a crown around my head, someone to' put a noose around my neck. Ok, more nooses than crowns.

 _..But why didn' I see it?..._

* * *

 _..because of her..._

Riddick stood an immobile mass of muscles, a statue, an ever-present guard on one side of the small rounded, glass case. Black-tinted googles perched upon stubbled bald head, no need for them with the low torchlight inside the inky marbled room. The subtle rise and fall to the great expanse of his shoulders, barely seen, held more than his usual dark leather armor around his torso. Guilt. It was something new, an acrid taste, he couldn't accept. His flexed fists tightened more at the feeling, clamped tightly against the hilts of his wickedly-curved blades by his sides.

Inside the modified cryo-chamber, encompassing the slender, athletic form of the girl, Kyra, what she looked like before her conversion. Her brownish-red curls in a cascading halo around her head, as the garments she wore from the triple-max prison, Crematoria, fitted her body. He wouldn't see her in their Necromonger garb of black-tattered, ceremonial robes, despite protests and much to their disappointment.

Even then, they could see he wasn't to be one to embrace their religion as their previous Lord Marshall had done willingly so, with open arms. _Fuck them and their religion, what left of his beast seethed lowly._

His silver mercurial eyes drinking their fill of the girl who looked only to be sleeping amicably, than in death's embrace. Laid atop a cloud of white, satiny fabric, hands resting peacefully beneath her small breast. Eyes ever closed and chest ever stilled. The girl's intricately made shivs in enteral slumber beside her unyielding form. The words **Jack B Badd** engraved on the belly of its hilt.

"I haven't seen you in this antechamber for weeks since the girl's death. Now, you've stayed that post for the past several days." Aereon's haughty voice spoke as the whisper of her form displayed out from the very air to solidify on the other side of the glassed-in girl.

Her blues taking in the hard figure of a broken man, a once upon a time convict from Butcher Bay. More human than animal as the weeks ran into each other. No beginning or end in his lust for blood, womanly flesh or dram, (Not necessarily in that order, either), as he sought to repress events that landed him as Lord Marshall of this fleet in the first place. Kyra's death, the one memory he wished he could sponge away.

Aereon's light steps ascended the raised dais and rounded the glass case in the dim-lit depressive room, serving as the dead girl's mausoleum.

"Been busy." His deep reply, never taking his silver orbs from the _sleeping_ figure.

"From the dried-blood drenched on your Ulaks, and stained upon your clothing, I can say the new Lord Marshall is fitting in quite well." Her soundless steps passing her close to his worship-podium; A girl he could never have or ever will. "Convert, kill, or just plain kill."

Sated from recent slaughters and adrenaline longed cooled in his blood, the convict's dark, rumbled reply. "Killed a few mercs. The ones who slaved out Kyra back on the planet, Lupus 5."

"You mean the tasteful display of heads you have adorned all over the great hall of Necropolis?" Aereon asked with a rueful smirk as she dared to walk closer to the dangerous man. "Did you even give them the option to be converted? Does Lupus 5 still exist?"

"Not my faith." Riddick shrugged lazily, not caring, face void of any emotion. "Death is what they do for a living. Me? I just kill to survive."

"Or to exact revenge," Aereon added insightfully, her eyes glanced down to the crystalline shrine. "For no other reason, than, for a preserved, lifeless body you obsess over."

The thunderous growl from Riddick's throat came seconds before the razor-sharp, wickedly curved Uklah, even with dried blood, bit against the elder elemental's throat.

"Tell me this...why you' still here?" A Purr most enticing in his words, but a deadly ripple beneath the surface. "The story's over. Zyhlaw's dead. What's stopping me from adding your breezy ass to my collection?"

"Because the bounty won't come down unless the blade comes down." A coy curl came to the side of the elemental's wizened old lips, reciting words from when she found herself in this predicament before.

"One bounty down...more just to follow." The hard press of his blade nipping deeper into flesh. Flustered, she pulled her flowing cream-colored shawls close as if to ward him away.

"Dramatics, really," She huffed, "One need not calculate what the girl meant to you, Lord Riddick." Puffed-out like a proud peacock in her usual grace, to hide the fear he knew he instilled in the older woman. He could smell the taint on air. Before, she settled knowing eyes upon him. "Did I say, the story was finished?"

He cocked his head to the side, silver shines studying the strange being as she walked from the kiss of his blade against the thin skin of her throat. Her body flowing in and out of view as if a disturbance of wind disrupted the airy being. "They say wherever an elemental goes chaos is sure to ensue. Only that we ever get involved when the need is dire to do as such...For the balance of all humanity."

Riddick barked a laugh, loud and menacing, not an ounce of humor in the eerie sound. _Not this shit, again_. "How bout' you find yourself another dumbass to manipulate, I'm through playing the _hero_ in your faery tale."

Aereon's blue eyes scanned around, the shadows of the room giving birth as his scantily clad consorts appeared from the deep recesses. On hunt for the insatiate attentions of their Lord Marshal. A few, she recognized, similar in size and looks to the girl, Kyra. No doubt, these women were gifts from Commander Vakko to his sovereign weeks ago. His offers, Aereon seeing through the ruse, just a distraction to keep the new Lord Marshall _busy_ and sated for the time being. While, he, Commander Vakko ran the Necoromonger armada toward the Underverse, destroying and converting as they went. And was the one really in control of power.

The three women ambled the few stairs and surrounded him, hands and bodies shamelessly touched and pressed against him suggestively, vying for his attention.

One was an alluringly-twisted Necromonger consort in a painted-on red dress, with metal skullcap that pierced the lovely flesh around her scalp. Three spikes, two at either side of the temples and one at her widow's peak. She favored the dead girl the most in outward form and appearance. Her graceful hand whispered against his strong jawline, pulling him to face her enticing beauty - If, for none other, that it reminded him of _her_.

"Come on, Lord Marshal," The woman's voice a sinful caress, while the other two continued their explicit pursuits upon his body. Her other hand slid slowly down the length of his thigh to the hardened bulge forming. "...you promised to play."

Without another word or thought to the older white-haired elemental, Riddick's lips curled wickedly and he allowed the seductively dressed women to pull him down the staired dais and away to his sleeping chamber where more of his prizes awaited his notice.

"I never said you _were_ , Mr. Riddick...the complete opposite in fact," Aereon spoke to his retreating form as they sauntered from view down the vast torch-lit hall. A necessary evil he was, if, but for a pawn. The 30-year-old prophecy, not greatly known by him and many others, was far from being over. Her eyes skipped down to the serene form of the girl, Kyra, unchanged since her death weeks ago.

Except...as Aereon stared hard in mounting frustration like she was missing the answer to the very universe itself. Probability was known, outcomes thoroughly calculated. Why wasn't-

The older woman's wizened, blue eyes went wide. She watched in fascinated-awe, as ever slightly, a twitch came to the girl's brow.

"Now, what are the odds of that?"

* * *

 **Up Next:** Kyra and the Underverse.


	2. Chapter 2

**A/N:** Thank you :)

 **Kyra and the Underverse**

* * *

 _They say hope begins in the dark - but most just flail around in the blackness, searching for their destiny..._

If she could just concentrate for one damn second!

Too much on mind, too many thoughts for that to happen so easily. Time here, showing that the silence could be so much more deafening than thousands of thrusters engaged all at once.

Eyes squeezed so hard, to the point she saw bursts of stars behind closed lids. The darkness was everywhere, whether her eyes were open or closed. Nothing new the pitch black, and had, in what felt like centuries since her decent to this unholy realm, become an unwanted friend...and lover. Trying her damndest to put all effort into one juncture of focus, if she could just- There! Kyra could almost burst with joy as she felt the twinge to her brow in that far off plane. A whoop did leave her mouth, forgetting for a second where she was, but dammnit, it was something!

Something so minimal on her end, but when one resided in the Underverse, just to be able to feel _something_...anything other than the constant mundane of absolute nothingness. Or, its unending companion, pain. To feel life again was like falling into bed after a gruesome twelve-hour shift. A drink of water after a bout of dehydration, where one's tongue felt like the very sands of a desert. It was just - just - indescribable!

Tears formed in the corner of her eyes at the breakthrough, as she tried to hold on to, and revel in the feeling of aliveness on the other end of the thread, just a little bit longer. It didn't last. It never lasted as long as she would have liked. All too soon she was ripped back into the grim reality of affliction and mindbending chaos. Boy, did they hype up this place as a Utopia of bliss? Maybe for the true converts, but seeing as how she killed the last Lord Marshal. It's no wonder she was exacted to this punishment of _the pits_.

Kyra didn't want to open hazel eyes, she already knew the scene that would greet. The fake induced color of white sterile-ness made her almost miss the emptiness of what she'd known to be real, the black abyss. _Almost._ Droplets that were held back bid their pursuit down her cheeks as she noncommittally dragged her eyes around the colorless room. At hand, she sat drooped back in pristine gold and red velvet chair. Golden, long dining table to her left with the goblet of wine she was drowning her sorrows into, despite lack of taste and effect. Mainly getting drunk off of the memory of alcohol than from it being real fermented grapes.

In the reflection of a silver goblet, she could see she looked like shit. No surprise after what she went through. Mascara ran in rivulets, making her smokey eyes look like some raccoon-creature did her makeup. Red lipstick smeared halfway across one cheek from her mouth. Hair was in a disarray of tangled curls not lustrous like it had been moments ago. While her sun-kissed skin was painted with small cuts and mottled bruises. A hysterical chuckle bubbled passed ruby lips as she tried for more of the wine only to find it hilariously empty - seeing as how this was all in her head, she should be able to at least fantasize-up more of the brew.

Kyra slammed the goblet down on the table beside her, as in chair facing the opposite way, screamed viciously. "Let me the fuck outta' here!"

 _'Don't draw any more attention to yourself, I think you've been through enough_ _!"_

"Suga, I'll say when I had enough." She giggled, on a mental high of exhaust and pain, to the practically bald headed version of herself. The girl - boy - she pretended to be to survive some dismal planet and times before that just to survive the cold streets of wherever she could safely lay her head.

 _'Funny, Kyra, you look like shit. Get yourself out of there now before he comes back!'_

Too late.

"Ready for my attention so soon?" They whipped their heads to the left to see his grace, the Lord Marshal - Well, ex-Lord Marshal - in all his Underverse glory stood posed in front of the implicit wall-sized, white double-doors.

"Jackie, out now." She whispered harshly to the kid, as panicked little breaths came to her chest. "I don't want you to see this."

 _'Please, just get out of there, Kyra.'_ She begged pitifully with worry. _'I'll know what's going on anyway. I always do.'_

 _Shit._

The woman with the brownish-red curls, attention, and fear turned toward the once ago, Lord Marshal - Zhylaw.

He smiled like a predator that knew it's prey was trapped, his cocky stance taking him closer till he was towered over her. Hands went on either side of the chair's armrests, caging her in as she leaned further back into the seat away from him. A futile means to escape but she had little choice in what she could do at the moment.

"Dear, Kyra, how I've enjoyed our games since the Underverse has so graciously besotted us to be joined here together." He dipped his head down until his face was just mere inches from her own. A high glee in his words as he spoke, that had Kyra sneering to herself, S _ick Bastard_.

Seeing the disdain in the depth of her green eyes, he teased. His finger running down the column of her neck to the valley between her breast that the clothing he conjured upon her flesh - dark silver, low corset - deliciously pushed up the small mounds for an enticing view. "Come now, why do you fight? We both know in the end you always beg for it."

He chuckled and his knees pushed apart her long thighs covered in wispy black shreds of her dress

"Is this the face you want to see as I show you the beauty of my pain?" In the middle of his speech, his voice dropped into a low growl and his features changed into her dark obsession. Black goggles covered eyes on a stubbled, bald head, muscles contorted and bulged under a black wife beater. His pointed nose, as Riddick, nuzzled against her neck and she could feel as he inhaled her scent deeply.

She whimpered, eyes automatically closed as her body felt hot and fluttery all over. "Stop! No more!"

"Kyra, are you going to be my good girl?" His voice rumbled low, a seductive purr and she could feel his scorching tongue lick the salt of her skin just like she imagined Riddick doing to her so many times before when _he_ had her pinned against bars in Cremetoria. A slip of memory Zhylaw was able to steal and use against her time and time again.

Her traitorous body flustered, thighs pressed tightly together to soothe the heated ache inside as she fell like times before into the lustrous lie.

The hand of _Riddick_ parted her all too eager legs, his calloused fingers inching their way higher up her inner thigh while his other hand ever increasingly squeezed the column of her slender neck.

Stars burst in radiant hues around the edges of her vision as she stared in the eyes of the devil himself. Too distracted by the feel of something as fingers roamed closer to her molten heat, the press on her windpipe only added to the dark euphoria he encased upon her. _So Beautiful,_ her only thought as tears like liquid diamonds formed at the corner of her green eyes.

Little gasps came in short pants but none of it registered as being her own, not even when the very air from her constricted throat turned to high pitched wheezes. All she could see were the colors that danced and chased each other madly around the only man she was willing to let anything be done to her by his hands. "Please..."

 _kyra...Kyra...KYRA!_

The fiery woman came snatched back to her body from the hands of the dark lord. The shout of her name roaring from Zhylaw's mouth ringing in her ears with his displeasure from her departure that echoed straight down to her very bones with chills.

Her naive younger-self in wispy form crouched beside her against the rock wall of the pits. The fucked up realm giving way to her possibilities with the fraction of powers gained from killing a part of that bastard Zhylaw. All the innocence and parts of herself she wanted to protect and keep from his hands; she conjured into the girl-boy she pretended to be all those years ago, Jack.

Memories he could use against her or twist into his murky reality, she stored in the girl for safekeeping when he would pull Kyra to his realm for a bit of fun like cat-to-mouse.

Kyra bolted up on her bottom, her eyes in slits toward the girl. "Jack, what did you do?!"

 _'He was hurting you, and you were just letting him.'_

The sound of accusation and disgust in Jack's voice had Kyra growling and bounding to her feet in a whirl-storm. "Damn you, Jack, I had it under control...he doesn't need to get a whiff that you exist."

 _'What's going on Kyra?'_ The nearly bald kid asked on her heels as her older self's fast pace took them through the maze of rock walls. _'Seems to me, getting away isn't what you want to do anymore.'_

Kyra pulled at the thick auburn curls on her head. The cut of the truth the kid spoke striking deeper than she'd like. Did she like it? Seemed anything was better than feeling this inky veil of nothingness at all. It was his face...that voice...those eyes, it was Jack's adoration for the fucker that could make it so he could do anything he wanted to her. Zhylaw knew this and took well advantage. "Fuck off, Jack! I don't need this shit!"

 _'He's not Riddick!'_ The wispy child screamed, just an apparition of smoke in form from the recesses of her own broken mind. Sometimes it was easy to forget the girl was something she created; that it was her.

"Riddick's the reason why we're weak!" Kyra snarled toward the smoky girl as she rounded on the bald one in anger

Jack stared back at her older self her shoulders shrugged and fell in defeat. _'He's our friend...he saved us from the monsters.'_

"Don't you get it, kid? Riddick's one of the monsters." Was she really this dumb? Did she really have such blind faith in _him_ when she was a kid?

 _'Really, Kyra? Because from where I stand, **he's** the reason you even allowed yourself to get caught all those times before.'_

The woman with the waterfall of unruly curls waved her hand over Jack, recalling her back to the vault in her mind where she kept her for safekeeping- or when she was annoyed with her young-self. A prison in the folds of grey matter and tissue, among synapses and neurons, Jack's cell until pushed forth whenever Zhylaw called for some fun.

"Bitch," Kyra grumbled at the bald kid as the wisp of smoke disappeared from view. Becoming one with with the girl again, emotions returned she didn't care for; guilt, longing, regret. With a huff, she took off toward the only sanctuary she knew in this vile, merciless place.

Her feet silently ate up the sand of the hard ground, snaking her way through the dark chasms hoping to meet some dumb fucking Necro who was looking for a good time down in the pits. To torture the souls who didn't make it to the Ethereal, the eternal glorified Utopian of the Underverse. Where all the good little converts went while those who betrayed the faith were sent to this hell hole to be done to as pleased by the upper-crust.

Kyra spat on the ground thinking about the glittering fools who lived in high luxury for the eternal rest of their soul while the rest of them lived horrors one was only acquainted with in nightmares. Unless you were her, she lived a nightmare since her first breath amongst the living. Her life was shit. And so was his, maybe why their paths intertwined as it did? She recognized something in him then when just twelve years old - hero worship, big brother or something more. She didn't know. But he too knew there was something about her...maybe why he indulged her as a kid. Took her under his wing, showed her the ropes, protected her. Maybe there could have been more if she lived to even see it.

She shook her head roughly to rid of such thoughts, too late for that now. Soon though, without the satiate to her lust to shed blood, she came to her alcove in the rock wall. To anyone else, it would have looked like just that - a wall. Thanks to earned abilities from a stab in the back, wounding the former Lord Marshall since you keep what you kill, after all. She killed a small piece of him and in return got a small fraction of his otherworldly powers which she used to make things more manageable here. If just a bit. Her hand touched a spot on the wall and instantly it dissolved allowing her to transverse the small passage, before becoming corporeal once more behind her.

Inside, a quaint cave, unlike any cave around, her eyes skimming over the low firelight in the small hearth. In the middle, a small table and two chairs while in the corners of the room parallel make-shift beds resided. Not that one slept in the pits or when dead, but small reprieves were given to visit memories and relive them in place of dreaming. Kyra used the time to reach the other side, the living side. She could still feel her body and through it the world of the living. It was hard and draining but she was getting so close. To what? She wasn't exactly sure, just knew that her body was still attainable on the other side. Heart swelling unwillingly at the knowledge that Riddick cared enough to preserve it and not bury it in some hole to rot. _Damn, Jack,_ she cursed blaming the child for her emotional side.

Coming back to the present, and to the room which wasn't much but something at least to feel what it meant to be normal again. Better than going mad like others here had done. In front of the fireplace, still, haven't noticed her yet. A friend she found days after first coming to this place. He was one of them on the verge of madness since he'd been here days longer than she, when first coming here. This piece of normalcy she figured out, not long afterward, that she could shapen and conjure food, bringing him back to the brink of sanity.

The Purifier doing a slight double take as he finally noticed her standing in front of the now solidified entrance. "Wasn't expecting you until much later. Let me guess, Jack?"

Kyra tossed off the brown sack-cloth robe from around her clothed body with only a grunt in reply to the pale Furyan. Her weary body settled into one of the wooden chairs at the small table while her eyes so long being in the darkness stared transfixed at the dancing flames.

"Sorry made the last bit of rations we had. Not much but I can still split it." He apologized as he scooped the mush from the pot over the low flames. Kyra just waved it off too drained to care about food or to even try to rouse up any more sustenance with her powers

"We don't die, yet we eat. We can't shit. Can't piss." Kyra mused over their mess of an afterlife as she slumped in the chair.

He gave a soft humorless chuckle and pointed his spoon at her as he took the other empty seat. "Anything to rid the pains, not that it's ever satisfied...Much better than going mad, I should know and you're deflecting."

Kyra dredged enough strength to pull up her hair into a leather cord and rolled her eyes at the once ago right-hand man of the bastard she hated. He gave a small smile, the spoon in hand scrapping the dredges of food in his bowel. "She's trying to protect you - Jack, she's worried about you."

I worry for myself. She shook her head at the absurdity of her reality. Like she and Jack were separate entities. They sort of were, she guessed. She did create the kid with her very own hands, painfully birthing her into being to keep safe all that could be used against her in this place by the wrong ones.

"I am Jack." The only reply, though weak, she could make.

"Were..." The purifier replied sardonically, the last spoonful hesitated by his lips as if he was already in fear of the hunger soon to hit after the last taste. "...we all started off as something else."

The words echoed from another lifetime but to another who was suppose to be the answer to the darkness that clung like another layer of skin.

"Hey," Kyra called out pulling him back from the temptress, her sable claws always waiting to pull its victims towards the dismal depths.

"Right." He cleared his throat, cheeks a bit red, scooping the spoon in mouth before plopping it in the bowel. "Jack's trying to protect you and you're being reckless."

She gritted her teeth, fingers etching the edge of her ever-present shiv housed in the pocket of her cargo pants. She definitely didn't need this shit, she was a grown ass woman. Her decisions were her own to make and the reasons her own too. Bad enough she - Jack - was reprimanding her - that she was scolding herself. As fucking confusing as it was.

"My apologies, Kyra, but am I wrong to say your running seems more in hopes that you're caught, just to see _him._ Zhylaw knows what Riddick means to you and you play into his hands just to see _his_ face." Pacifying the young woman he put up his palms in surrender seeing the look of death cross her face. He didn't fear death, he was already dead but what Kyra could do with a blade and an eternity to do it. Now that was what held his tongue for the most part. "You care for the male Furyan. And how can one not when they find the other half of their self."

Green eyes snapped up, brows knitted together at the revelation catching her off guard. "What-"

"It's more likely for the universe to implode in on itself than for Furyan mates to ever stop trying to be together."

"We're n-...I'm not..." The world was spinning and she could barely hold on for the ride, her thumb drawing blood as it pressed into the cool metal of the blade.

"I think he knew it then, why he left you all those years ago with the holy man. To protect you, his mate. He knew what he was and the temptation too great to know it to be a girl of only twelve years old - the last female of Furya." He shook his head, a look of empathy on his face as if knowing such misery. "I don't think he's quite the monster he's made out to be...but then again why tempt fate."

Tears pierced emeralds, pushing from the table she stood stiff not knowing what to think or believe. The Purifier knew of her life, what she was willing to divulge, anyway. What else was there to do in this eternity than to bare one's soul to another. But to believe she was Furyan or that she and Riddick were mates? They both were implausible, couldn't possibly be true. How many times did she long to think she meant more, anything, to the convict than just a pang of guilt or liability?

"You're lying." The tears now steamed down reddened cheeks, glistening in the glow of the fire.

"Why would I, Kyra? You know what I am, I was born and raised on Furya. One of a handful to survive the destruction of our home planet and the billions that cry out in revenge...My people and yours...and his."

"I'm not Furyan! I'm just a street-rat who nobody wants, who got kicked from one foster home to another because my drug-addict parents didn't give a shit about me. A bitch who killed when at only eight years of age because my _uncle_ couldn't keep his hands to himself! Slaved out from a stupid ass decision made at twelve and used as a dirty condom just to be passed on to the next and the next and the next..."

The solemn sigh from the purifier as he looked sadly toward the ragging young woman, his eyes holding his own terrors. "Hardships abound. Such is the Furyan life, but it is what makes us stronger and feared among all races. Our ability to endure despite the odds..."

"Why tell me any of this? - it's too late for happily ever after, I'm dead!" She snapped sarcastically, bitterness etched on her features.

"Hope." He stated simply with a slow shake to his head. "For a friend who pulled me from the kiss of madness, I only try to do the same. Zhylaw isn't Riddick, Kyra and he will utterly use you until you're as mad as I was or there is nothing else of you to use."

"We're in this hell hole forever, does it really even matter?" With her words hung in the air, she phased through the cave opening leaving behind the paled-skin Furyan with the entrance solidifying once more only seconds later.

* * *

Sweat beaded around her brow, rolling into her eyes not like she could hardly see anything anyway. Hand over hand she made what felt like a never-ending climb up the rock wall of the deep chasms. Huffing and straining through the pitch black abyss she climbed on despite rocks crumbling between fingers and the blades in the tips of her boots barely slicing its grip into the hard stone.

What felt like an eternity later, Kyra dragged herself up and over the ledge of the cliff she scaled. It was no fight but it would do as the exertion drummed through her blood racing within veins. What felt like even more of a workout, she climbed up on her feet and straightened, beholding the sight of the grand Ethereal city shining brightly and magnificently some distance away. Even with her hate toward the place and its inhabitants, she couldn't deny the awe she felt from the beholdeth of the Utopian. Yet, no matter how like the sun it shone, its illumination never reached the recesses of the pits.

A glare set in hazel eyes as she continued to hate on the golden scene before her, hands winding the air in front of her as a bright white orb grew, weakening her by the second.

"I should just level it all. Bastards" She sneered feeling the power under her palms grow and falter all at the same time with the struggle to keep it.

 _'Don't fuck around, Kyra, you know you don't have that kind of power.'_ Jack spoke from the recesses of her mind.

"I just need it for one person." An evil grin sliced her lips, an edge in the slit of her eyes.

 _'And then what happens when you're spent and you can no longer conjure food to feed your pains or keep your cozy little cave?'_

"I'd be happily mad to know he doesn't exist anymore." A lie she knew it, she hated him with every being of her existence and hated herself much more gor wanting it but in their fucked up relationship, she used him just as much as he used her.

Instead of releasing her threat, her hands brought back most of the power inside turning the large orb tiny to crush between fingers. When she brought her hands apart again, out fluttered blue butterflies their illumination piercing the night as bits of sparkle were left behind in their wake. A soft glow lit-up her skin as they flew around reminding the girl of the glowing larvae inside the cave she swore would be her tomb as death nipped and clawed at their makeshift door.

Kyra shook her head to dispell thoughts of being trapped inside a tight opening with Imam and Fry before the older woman risked and gave her life to get help. How her heart had leaped with joy seeing Riddick return for them. Return for her. Despite what anyone believed otherwise, or even the small part of her that doubted, he could have never truly left them behind. Leave her behind, could he?

Mates. Right.

Releasing the breath she didn't realize she held, she pushed away memories of another lifetime as she withdrew the power inside making the glowing butterflies disappear. Green eyes locked on the eternal city, Kyra squatted down to her feet planting butt on the dusty rock ground to lie back and stare at the black void high above. An endless inky sky with no beginning or end.

Jack materialized, corporeal, on the ground laying beside the hardened woman, her bald head laying upon Kyra's shoulder. _'Show me the sky.'_

Kyra gave a small exasperated snort, her eyes catching that of the twelve-year-old girl's pleading ones. The hazel color mirrored her own. _'Please?'_

A sigh pressed between thin lips as she gave in, it was their solace when down. Before her mom slipped off into the arms of addiction they would stare off into the sky together and watch the thousands of tiny lights like sparkling eyes staring down at them. She couldn't even remember what her mom looked like but she could recall every detail of the stories her mom told of a planet so beautiful she couldn't even mention the name passed trembling lips and teary eyes. Her mother would raise a hand to the sky as they laid on a patched roof of one shack or another they called home and point to a spot of blackness in the sky where once a planet used to be. She would say, "That's where home was, our home...Our people..." There her father was once a proud warrior, but regretfully leaving to ensure the safe passage of his pregnant wife, off a planet doomed by another race. Instead of joining his people, his brothers, on the battlefield to die in glory against their enemy.

They barely made it with their lives and escaped to the Taurus System, making a new home on the planet Taurus 1. They made it, all except one and it would be several pregnancies and years later when her mother gave up hope or caring, that Jacklyn was born in the picture. A five-pound ball of curly haired mess entering too late in their lives for them to love her. The last bit of life her mother and father clung to not lasting as the poor society in which they lived beat them down until there were no more fucks to give. This planet wasn't the one they grew up on; a shining glory where none compared. A place too awful not to be because the only comfort her parents could find was in a syringe. The last she saw of them before she was ripped away to orphanage after orphanage was when she was six years old. They had OD, hand in hand on some dirty, pissed-stained mattress in a crack house with single white note card at the bottom of their feet. _Sorry Princess_ , written in her mother's messy hand on the card.

Maybe the Purifier was right, maybe she was Furyan. Her life was certainly tragic enough and her temper could match that of Riddick's at times...

 _'I miss them too.'_ Jack whispered reliving the memory along with her older self, breaking Kyra from dark thoughts. Who did she mean, her parents? Him, or maybe all three?

Blinking back tears, Kyra raised fingerless, gloved-hands in the air, her thumbs and forefingers touching before spreading her hands a few inches apart. Right before their eyes, a tiny sky filled with dancing jewels filled their sight. The tip of her right fore-finger coming to the middle of the scene and slowly pushing it up until it melded, taking over the inky sea above. Becoming the sky she once knew when alive, vast and awe-inspiring.

Heads turned, raising up, down in the pits and high from the Necromonger Utopia, all captivated by the fluttering of dancing stars way above them. They stood rooted, transfixed by the wake of its beauty as some tears were shed down soiled faces and mouths agape upon pristine ones.

A panicked Jack clung to her body as Kyra took some contentment with the sight above. _'What are you doing?... Everyone will see.'_

The nineteen-year-old knew with the limited power she held, that the starry sky wouldn't last long. If it gave some peace than good and if it caught the attention of one in particular, even better. She was thirsting for a fight. She needed to see his face - hated that she was so weak...that he made her weak. Even with knowing it to be Zhylaw who took on the appearance of Riddick's face and body, the hunger with her dark obsession didn't care, it was better than nothing at all. It was better than not having Riddick at all. Mates? Certainly seemed right because the moment she met the killer on that godforsaken planet infested with those bioraptors, she was gone and found in the eyes of the silver-gazed beast. All consumed. She knew and he knew...there was something between them. But that was another time, another life and all she had was now.

"Let them see." Her heart quickened, body thrilling at the prospect of Zhylaw finding her. Because no matter the fight or torture upon her mind, it was _Riddick_ who did those things to her. And she'd shamefully come to the conclusion long ago in this dark reality, that she would allow just about anything from _his_ hands.

Too many wishes, too many what ifs and chances lost to once ago. She was fucking sick in the head, maybe so. Yet, what else was there to do for an eternity while the feeling of nothingness consumed and the pain was the closest thing to joy? And you'd do just about anything to feel again.

She just hoped if what the Purifier said about them being mates were true, Riddick would come looking for her. Somehow she just knew, he always would.

* * *

 **Up Next:** A drunken Riddick stumbles upon the Quasi-Dead


End file.
